Affective Images of Tourism Destinations

Abstract

The destination image and positioning studies in tourism have been limited to those dealing with the image's perceptual or cognitive component. This study examined the applicability of Russel and his colleagues' proposed affective space structure to large-scale environments (i.e., tourism destination countries) as well as its potential as a positioning structure to study affective images of tourism destinations. The multidimensional scaling analysis of 11 Mediterranean countries along with proposed affective space structure indicated that Russel and his colleagues' proposed affective space can also be applied to places that are not perceived directly. It also showed potential for studying the affective image positioning of tourism destinations. The article concludes with some theoretical and practical implications and future research areas regarding tourism destination images.

Destination images, holistic images and personal normative beliefs: Predictors of intention to revisit a destination

“…Image is a construct that is widely applied in marketing and behavioral sciences to represent people's perceptions of products, objects, behaviors and events driven by beliefs, feelings, and impressions (Baloglu & Brinberg, 1997;Crompton, 1979). In the area of marketing tourist destinations, image has been given various definitions.…”

“…In addition, with respect to cognition, Pike (2008) argued that it is the sum of what is known or believed by the individual about a tourism destination, as well as the associated knowledge that could or could not be derived from a previous visit. The affective component refers to the emotional responses or appraisals of the individual, reflecting the tourist's feelings towards the destination (Baloglu & Brinberg, 1997;Baloglu & McCleary, 1999a;Bigné, Andreu, & Gnoth, 2005;Hallmann, Zehrer, & Müller, 2014). According to Russell and Snodgrass (1987) people develop affective evaluations for a place before entering that environment, during their presence there and after leaving that place to move somewhere else.…”

The impact of using non-media information sources on the future use of mass media information sources: The mediating role of expectations fulfillment

“…Tourists typically travel to a place different from their residence and in several cases to a place where they had never been before. To explore or reduce the risk of unfamiliar product experimentation, tourists seek information (Dodd, Pinkleton and Gustafson 1996) and create destination expectations (Baloglu and Brinberg 1997). Hence, since tourism products are perceived by consumers while taking into consideration their service expectations (Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry 1988), these expectations become a major influence on consumer choices (Neelamegham and Jain 1999).…”

Using Social Media Mining to Understand Public Opinion towards Destination Image

“…Latest guidelines for Tourism Marketing admit that the development of the image of a tourist destination is based on the consumer's rationality and emotionality, and as the result of the combination of two main components or dimensions (Baloglu & Brinberg, 1997;Lin, Morais, Kerstetter, & Hou, 2007 Beerli & Martin, 2004). It is also important to note that the cognitive component of the image has a considerable impact on the affective component (Ryan & Cave, 2005).…”